fackinsteve's wheel thread

[fackinsteve]

Hey everyone, I know this of the more dull sections of the forum but I wanted to dedicate my own thread to all of my wheel refinishing projects both present and future. More or less for my own enjoyment. A little background on myself;

I come from the body shop industry focusing mainly on refinishing. This includes sanding and prep, taping cars, painting cars, paint correction etc. I no longer do this as a job so I've been setting myself up with some projects to keep my lust for the industry occupied. Ultimately my goal for this thread is show wheel refinishing done more or less on a budget. Here is a list of the wheels I currently have and will be re-doing at some point:

1. Epsilon Southern Ways, 16x9.5 et27 5x120
2. Trans Am GTA honeycomb, 16x8 et0 5x4.75 (5x120.65)
3. BBS RF 010, 011 17x8.5 et13, 17x9.5 et13 5x120
4. Work Equip 05 17x8 et28, 17x9 et31

[fackinsteve]

Epsilon Southern Way





These wheels I originally bought for my E28 project to be built to 17s but I found another set I switched my focus on (BBS RF). The previous owner took off all the hardware and removed the face from the outer halves. Fortunately he included all the hardware to put it back together, so I will be reusing the old bolts but with new screws and valve stems. Last night I began prepping the outer lips for sanding and polish, I plan on doing everything by hand on these so a lot of sanding it to come! I started by washing all the lips with dish soap and warm water followed by some acetone. Heres what I was left with



Overall currently I would rate them a solid 5/10 condition wise. Theres no deep rash and no bends but there is definitely some work to be done! I will be focusing mainly on one wheel for now just to not bore you to death. I started off with some 80 grit paper for the real nasty stuff making sure my scratches are linear and working on one section at a time. Here's some of the nasty stuff.







Making some progress





Once all the gnarly stuff was out I liberally sprayed down the lip with some water and grabbed some 180 and started taking out the 80 scratches. I went around everything multiple times, checking my work making sure there weren't any left over marks from the coarse paper. Finally I dried it off and had a look at everything.







Not too bad! More to come tonight on these


Got some more sanding done tonight, making good progress:












Sanded with 320,400, 600, 1000, and 1500. Tomorrow I'll finish sanding with 2000 and 3000 then I'll begin polishing. Once I'm finished with all 4 I'll paint the centers

[fackinsteve]

Here's what I actually intend on using on my E28. As stated above, these are BBS RF 010 and 011's. I do have big plans for these to come once all my other sets are gone. They're currently 8.5 and 9.5 but want to relip them and make them 9.5 and 10.5. I'm not 100% on the face color but I don't feel like separating them just to paint them. These also still have the OEM BBS hardware which to me is pretty cool.





More to come on these

Threw a quick coat of polish on these to test it out. Pretty impressed

[fackinsteve]

Finished up the first Epsilon tonight! Finished up with 2000 and 3000 and polished everything by hand. They're not totally perfect but I hope to improve my skillset on the next 3 lips. I also mocked up the faces too, not sure if I want to keep them black. I guess the next owner will have to decide that for me!





Polishing on the first section



And just about done here







And mocked up with the faces on next to my RFs



All in all it was a lot of work but I feel as though the end result was worth it, once the rest of the lips are polished I'll throw up some pictures of those too and final assembly of course

[drift55]

If you ever want to get rid of the Momos and keep them in the family, I'll buy them lol

[69clark]

Looks good. Those epsilon caps look like caps I made, haha. Keep it up.

[fackinsteve]

If you ever want to get rid of the Momos and keep them in the family, I'll buy them lol

I do want to, they look fugly on my car lol

Looks good. Those epsilon caps look like caps I made, haha. Keep it up.

Yeah I remember the p/o saying they were replica caps. Great quality though!

[zoo]

I know this of the more dull sections of the forum

You take that back!

[fackinsteve]

You take that back!

[fackinsteve]

So long time no update, finished up the Epsilons tonight. The buyer wanted the faces as they were because he was going to paint them myself so thats why one is grey and the rest are still black and there's no hardware installed. Reason it took awhile to do is because I was spending a ton of time on my 5 speed swap on my S10 and getting it road worthy so I didn't have much time to mess with these.







Picking up a new project tomorrow night! Stay tuned for that, in the meantime here are my RFs on my S10

[zoo]

Good job on the Epsilons.
Someone was asking about them in your FS thread.

[fackinsteve]

Good job on the Epsilons.
Someone was asking about them in your FS thread.

Thank you, I met up with him last week and worked out a trade for these



Will start working on polishing the lips maybe this week. In the works of finding a powdercoater that can tackle these faces as they're pretty rough. Altogether though I'm pretty pumped to rock these in the future on my E28

[danielsahhhn]

dayum those looks KILLER on the s10!!!!

[fackinsteve]

dayum those looks KILLER on the s10!!!!

Thanks!!!!